Investigation of the effect of thermal spray aluminum coating thickness using metallography observe

The injection molding industry has grown and developed with the increasing demand for polymer-based products. The big thing for the injection molding industry is maintaining the condition of medium and high-carbon steel concrete to protect it from corrosion challenges. One of the efforts to keep concrete from being corrosive is to apply thermal spray aluminum (TSA) coating technology. This study aims to analyze the effect of the number of layers of thermal spray aluminum (TSA) on the thickness of the ST60 medium carbon steel layer. This research can be directly applied to the surface of injection molds so that they are resistant to corrosion and tend to be applied to treatments. Before the coating process, the substrate surface is smoothed using sandpaper from grid 60 and grid 400; then, the substrate is subtracted into four different variables, namely 1 to 4 coating layers. Each coating result was observed using the metallographic method. The results of this metallographic observation show that the more layers, the more layers, the more layers, the more, the more, and the deeper. The observations show that there are defects/pores in the aluminum coating layer.